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Hash Brown Potatoes

Hash brown potatoes are sautéed potatoes cooked with rendered pork fat, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,668 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Hash Brown Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fat

  1. Cut the fat salt pork into small pieces and render the fat in a skillet.

  2. Remove the scraps, leaving 4 tablespoons of fat.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the chopped potatoes to the skillet and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Toss the potatoes until well mixed with the fat and cook for 4 minutes, tossing constantly.

  3. Press the potatoes to one side of the skillet to form an omelet shape.

  4. When browned underneath, turn the potatoes onto a hot serving dish, top side down.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Fat salt pork
Renders fat that coats the potatoes and fries them in the skillet, adding savory flavor.
Potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish; their starch crisps and browns in the hot fat.

The step that matters

Pressing the potatoes into an omelet shape. The potatoes must sit undisturbed in the hot fat long enough to form a browned crust underneath. Stirring or moving them too early prevents crust formation, leaving the hash soft rather than crisp.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Tomatofits less well
  4. Carrotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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